


honey, nothing scares me anymore

by eternal_elenea



Category: Disney - All Media Types, Disney Princesses, Fairy Tales and Related Fandoms, Little Mermaid - All Media Types, Twisted Princess (Disney Fanart)
Genre: F/F, Fractured Fairy Tale, Minor Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-03
Updated: 2012-06-03
Packaged: 2017-11-08 12:48:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,190
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/443358
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eternal_elenea/pseuds/eternal_elenea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Her hair is the color of blood, the color of the flame within Ursula’s eyes and her words; she has scales lining her neck and pearls woven between her fingers; she has a story to tell, a life to live, a war not yet ended. <i>A re-telling of The Little Mermaid.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	honey, nothing scares me anymore

**Author's Note:**

  * For [gyzym](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gyzym/gifts).



> Title from "Summertime Sadness" by Lana Del Rey.

“Your voice could start fires,” Ursula says, smiles at Ariel with her red, red lips, fluttering black lashes.

“Have there not been enough deaths?” says Ariel and Ursula quirks an eyebrow, lets her smile widen, says, “Perhaps, Princess.”

  
  
  


Ariel has a war under her fingertips, on the roof of her mouth, clouding the light in her eyes. Spears raze the sea and Ariel waits in the palace, waits for her father to come home when the sun has set and the water has gone dark, cleans him with her careful hands, wipes blood off his torso, his arms. (Doesn’t wipe it from his eyes, can’t.)

Ursula wipes the blood from Ariel after she has put her father to bed; braids Ariel’s hair, places a golden shell at Ariel’s neck. Ursula holds Ariel close, closer still, whispers into her ear, and Ariel shakes, shakes, and turns the water even saltier around her eyes.

Ariel could never call Ursula’s words “sweet nothings,” but.

  
  
  


“You are my most precious treasure,” her father tells her and the palm he rests against her head may be gentle, but his voice is laced with steel, “I will have you safe.”

“Of course, papa,” says Ariel, “I promise.”

She does not say that hiding away did her mother no good at all, doesn’t say that it likely would not save her either.

  
  
  


The days are dim with filtered light and thick with dreams; Ariel sings fairytales of the men upon the shores, dancing upon their two legs. They are stories of whimsy, of a childlike happiness that Ariel can scarcely remember. She sings and sometimes the halls don’t seem so empty, filled with the lives of all of those tales; she sings and sometimes the halls seem emptier, absent of ghosts long past, mothers and sisters and husbands.

Sometimes, she sings and still it is claustrophobic, the weight of this war, woven through each stray thought and each unsteady note, until Ariel’s songs become stories of a different sort, become instead eulogies.

  
  
  


Less often, Ariel dreams of swimming and then running away, dreams of her own two feet and of warmth and dancing. These songs are Ursula’s alone, sung in the deep recesses of the night when they are curled around each other, warding the nightmares away. Less often, Ariel sings and thinks that she would run, she would run, except.

  
  
  


“If only I had your voice,” Ursula says once, sweet, sweet, and smooth as the bottle-green glass lining the walls, and Ariel laughs, leans on her, says, “Your voice is beautiful.”

“I would still have yours,” Ursula says, and Ariel, Ariel should have learned the lilt in Ursula’s promises by now, but.

  
  
  


Her hair is the color of blood, the color of the flame within Ursula’s eyes and her words; she has scales lining her neck and pearls woven between her fingers; she has a story to tell, a life to live, a war not yet ended.

  
  
  


“I wish I could do  _something_ ,” she says, fifteen and broken with the smell of blood and salt, with sound of stumbling currents and crashing waves.

“Well,” says Ursula, an unholy light in her eyes.

  
  
  


Ariel’s songs become desperate, clawing at her throat, wretched from her gut. They change until they’re high and sharp and warbling, careening towards some unknown, endless abyss.

Ariel’s songs become desperate, laced with a melancholy that can’t be taught, and they come, they come.

  
  
  


Her fingers turn bloodstained by day and now they will never be anything but. Her hands turn iron-lined and her mouth is soft, soft, but evermore deadly.

The first sailor has hair like wet sand, the second has eyes the color of seaweed, the third has bones delicate as razors; all of them have fingers like fishhooks, grasping for the surface as the water fills their lungs. All of them look the same, pale-skinned and dark-eyed and limp, sprawled across her dresser and all of them lay still, silent, as she carves gills into their necks.

Ursula smiles, feral, and forges them new souls, twisting her magic tighter, tighter, until they are raised, gasping, from their shallow graves.

  
  
  


“Is there no other way?” Ariel asks, with flesh under her fingernails and her hand laced with Ursula’s, and Ursula does not smile, might smirk, says, “Ah, Princess, even sorcery only solves some problems.”

She says, later, soft and kind and oddly sharp in a way that Ariel doesn’t recognize, “If you truly find it distasteful, I could borrow your voice?” and Ariel brings her closer, kisses the spatter of blood from her neck, doesn’t reply.

She’s only ever been possessive of two things, Ariel; the second is Ursula.

  
  
  


The war takes a turn for the worse and their soldiers, crafted of salt and flesh and magic, litter the trench graves alongside corpses of the merfolk. Ariel sometimes sees their bodies, recognizes them. She sees them and remembers the way that their fingers left bruises upon her arms, remembers the way they bled over her hands, remembers the flutter of newly crafted gills against her palm.

Her father tells her tales of these soldiers and there is almost a smile on his lips, for even as the war worsens, he gets better, comes home with fewer wounds and, and, and  _hope_.

“Folk with two legs,” he says, eyes gleaming, “Imagine.”

“Like in the stories, papa,” she says and knows she won’t ever say the true words in her head, not to him. 

“If they weren’t here,” he says, doesn’t finish the sentence, doesn’t need to, and Ariel smiles, tries to pretend she’s the same girl that he’d left, innocent and unbloodied, fails.

  
  
  


Ariel caresses her voice sharper, sharper, until it gleams with the edge of a forged dagger, until her songs alone ruin whole ships of men and she can collect bodies, already drowned, from the wreckages.

She brings dozens of them to Ursula each day, lines the rooms of the palace, the halls, with corpses, watches Ursula twist the bodies like strands of her own hair, gleaming and dark. She lifts them again to their feet once they have been awoken, doesn’t remove the blood from their cheeks, releases the flood of soldiers as dusk settles; in the morning, Ariel returns to the surface, flicks her iridescent tail in the sunlight, draws another ship in. 

The rocks are jagged and her smile is bright and her voice, well, her voice is deadly.

  
  
  


There must have been regret, once, and not just the game of it, but now there’s only a story to tell, a life to live, a war to win.

Now there are only Ursula’s lips on hers and a joint smile between them, bodies curled together without the pretense of nightmares. Now there is only Ariel’s voice and Ursula’s words and fingers curled around ribcages, newly cut gills, an army of soldiers, twisted together through sea water and copper and a strange sort of melody.

Now, only Ariel and her Ursula; a kingdom to win, then a kingdom to rule.

  
  
  


“Temptress,” they call her, across the seas, across the ages, and Ariel sings, sings, doesn’t know how to stop.


End file.
